Posted May 2009 Cartooning and animation competitions back for 2009
		2008 Online Cartooning Competition winner for Challenge 1 Do you have any budding artists at your school? Yes? Well encourage them to tune their creativity and test their skills in one of the online visual arts events now running on the Learning Place. Both annual events, the Online Cartooning Competition and the Online Animation Festival invite students to submit their entries for a shot at winning experiences with top creative professionals. 'The competition is becoming more popular every year,' said Smart Classrooms Mentor and Online Cartooning Competition organiser Hazel Orr. 'All students are eligible to enter their creations in the competition, no matter their age or artistic ability.' Open until 05 June, the Online Cartooning competition requires entrants to enter one or more challenges, including drawing a healthy food cartoon hero or a caricature of someone famous. Students from all Queensland schools will use the competition project room on the Learning Place to upload their entries.

'Students can enter as many times as they like and may also enjoy visiting the site to view other students' entries,' said Ms Orr.

'This helps students review and evaluate others' work and stages of development by tapping into the unique strength of eLearning environments to facilitate critical thinking.'

Meanwhile, animators have an additional few weeks to prepare their entries for the Online Animation Festival.

Coinciding with the Year of Creativity, Festival organiser David Green said this competition would assess entrants' skills with the latest in animation software.

'If you have access to a computer at school or home, there is a multitude of free or low cost software available to produce your entry,' said Mr Green.  

We have a range of categories this year, stop-motion, animation and an open section – this is where entrants can experiment with programs such as Scratch, Flash and Machinima.'

The Online Animation Festival closes on 31 July 2009.

Read comments from the winners of the 2008 Online Cartooning Competition.